Nov 19, 2008

Environmental Proposals Flop on Election Day

One message of the recent election was that voters want change; they seek a new way of doing things. President-elect Barack Obama ran on a platform that included a ringing call for renewable energy sources. So it is an odd contradiction that the same voters who turned to the Democratic candidate also turned their back on environmental proposals. For instance, California voters turned down Proposition 10. Named the “California Renewable Energy and Clean Alternative Fuels Initiative,” the measure was a $5 billion, first-in-the-nation public investment to provide funds for a wide variety of alternative energy projects across the state, including consumer incentives for clean alternative vehicle fuels and the construction of renewable-energy generation facilities, such as solar and wind power plants.

“Everyone talks about reducing the use of imported oil, lowering greenhouse gas emissions and cleaning the air through the use of alternative energy resources, and California’s voters considered supporting these critical goals in a meaningful way,” said Andrew J. Littlefair, president and CEO of Clean Energy, a leading supplier of natural gas for transportation uses. “The passage of Prop. 10 would have provided an important funding mechanism to rapidly turn these goals into a reality throughout the state.”

The reason the ballot proposition went down to defeat was its hefty price tag. In the current dreary economy, California voters, already beset by the prospect of higher sales taxes, were not in a mood to increase government spending still more.